Coronavirus: “The Church too has her weapons.” Church in Italy confronts epidemic with the miraculous Crucifix used in the plague years
“The Church too has her weapons.” So says Don Claudio Rubagotti, parish priest of Casalmaggiore (Cremona) in Italy. The priest explains the decision to display a seventeenth century crucifix inside the Cathedral of Santo Stefano, considered miraculous, to counter the spread of the coronavirus . Before him, even Monsignor Andrea Migliavacca, bishop of San Miniato, in the Pisan area, had exposed a “miraculous” crucifix against the plague of the seventeenth century.
The inhabitants of San Miniato had turned with hope to the crucifix during the years from 1628 to 1631 marked by the plague. And in the end the city kept the vow to build a sanctuary for the wooden cross to have been spared from the epidemic.
